Lots of Learning and Fun with Frogs Sensory Bin

My 2½-year-old granddaughter, Zoey, has had lots of fun with Montessori-inspired frog activities this spring. So I wanted to make her a frog sensory bin that would cover a number of concepts and could easily be changed throughout the month.

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Lots of Learning and Fun with Frogs Sensory Bin – YouTube Video

Zoey has always loved her sensory bins, but I think this one is her favorite!

Frog Sensory Bin (and DIY Sensory Table)

Frog Sensory Table

I already had my DIY sensory table, so it was easy to make a frog sensory bin once I had the materials.

Materials Used for Frog Sensory Bin

DIY sensory table (This has been AWESOME! It’s been very durable and the perfect container for our sensory bins. Of course, you can use a bin on the floor.)

Feel free to adapt your sensory bin for your family. These are just the materials I used. Water beads can be very messy and easily mix with the glass gems in the dry area. With young preschoolers, you might want to have a water bead container with high edges or make the whole sensory bin a water bead pond. If you add rocks (and maybe logs), you can have dry areas for the frogs. It’s a good idea to have all printed materials laminated with a laminate edge of about 1/4 inch to keep the cardstock or photo paper dry.

Important: If you use this with a toddler, be aware that glass gems and water beads (and some of the other small objects in this sensory bin) are very dangerous for children who mouth objects. Even with children who don’t typically mouth objects, I prefer being extra careful with water beads. I put this sensory bin up out of reach whenever I’m not closely supervising Zoey’s work.

Frog Life Cycle Activities

Matching Frog Eggs with Frog Life Cycle Book Page

I like to add at least one special hands-on learning activity using a printable to each sensory bin I prepare. Zoey LOVES handmade books. For the life cycle activity, I used the Toddler Frog Life Cycle Book from Montessori Print Shop to make a handmade Frog Life Cycle book. I just printed it, cut the pages apart, and laminated and hole punched each page before binding the book with a binder ring.

Zoey had enjoyed her Montessori frog life cycle work using the Montessori Print Shop frog life cycle materials when she was 19 months old. Zoey loves knowing about the stages of development of a frog and enjoyed revisiting the frog life cycle.

Fine-Motor Activity – Using Sugar Tongs to Feed Flies to Frogs

Using Sugar Tongs to Feed Flies to Frogs

Zoey has been working on activities to develop her pincer grasp, so she was able to use sugar tongs to pick up flies for the frogs. She’s worked quite a bit initially using toast tongs to gain the fine-motor coordination to use the more difficult sugar tongs.

Other Ideas for the Frog Sensory Bin

I typically leave out a sensory bin for a month or so before changing it to a different theme. During the month, I might switch some of the activities in the bin to add new learning activities and keep it fresh. Here are a couple of ideas I’ll be using with Zoey’s frog sensory bin:

I’ll make the entire bin a pond with various rock areas and more lily pads for the frogs to use when the adult frogs aren’t in the water.

I’ll print at 50%, cut out, and laminate leaving a laminate edge (to seal the cardstock against water) frog number cards from my subscriber freebie. Then I can stand the frogs up in a thick pool of water beads. This works well for a scavenger hunt to find and order the numbers from 1-10. You could use the movable alphabet letters for a letter sound scavenger hunt as long as you don’t mind the fact that blue poison dart frogs aren’t good swimmers (so they don’t live in water).

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Reader Interactions

Comments

Hi
I do teacher training workshops. I am writing to ask permission to use the photo of the frog pond sensory bin (without the precious child) in a Power Point Presentation. I will credit your site and provide your URL.

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The activities shared on this blog require adult supervision at all times. You know which activities are appropriate for your children and/or the children under your care and are responsible for those children's safety.